• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.187-196
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• 2016

Pressure-assisted forward osmosis (PAFO) process has recently been under spotlight for its potential to improve forward osmosis (FO) process performance by applying low hydraulic pressure on the feed side. Structure parameter, one of the governing factors in estimating water flux and solute flux across FO membranes in the solution-diffusion model (S-D model), determines solute resistivity in FO and PAFO processes. This study aims to estimate the trend of structure parameter change with respect to varying additional hydraulic pressure condition in PAFO.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.91-99
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• 2022

It is a global challenge to fulfill the demand for clean water at an affordable cost to all the strata of the population. Desalination of seawater as well as brackish water by the membrane separation process is a well-established and cost-efficient method. However, there is still inherent problem of membrane fouling, disposal of the reject as well as a capital-intensive process. While electrodialysis (ED) is a membrane-based separation process in which a driving force is the potential difference. The advantages of ED process are excellent efficiency and low operation cost. Ion exchange membrane (IEM) used in the ED process needs to have higher chemical and thermal stability along with excellent mechanical strength for long-term use without losing its efficiency. The ion exchange capacity of the ED membrane is largely dependent on the conductivity of IEMs. In this review, the modification strategy of the pristine membrane to enhance the stability and ion conductivity of cation exchange membrane (CEM) and anion exchange membrane (AEM) is discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.37-43
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• 2014

In this study, capacitive deionization (CDI) was introduced for desalination of mining water. Ion-exchange polymer coated carbon electrodes (IEE) were used in CDI to desalt mining water. The CDI performance using the IEE for desalination of mining water was carried out and then was compared with that using general carbon electrodes without ion-exchange polymer coating (GE). Moreover, to investigate the effect of the concentration of influent solutions on CDI performance, the CDI performance using the IEE for desalination of brackish water (NaCl 200 ppm) was also performed and analyzed. As a result, the higher salt removal efficiency, rate and the lower energy consumption in the CDI process using the IEE and mining water were obtained compared with those using the GE and mining water. It is mainly due to higher non-Faradaic current, low ohmic resistance of the influent, overlapping effect of electric double layers in micropore of the electrode. In addition, the CDI process using the IEE and brackish water shows much higher salt removal efficiency and lower salt removal rate than that using the IEE and mining water. This results from the lower concentration (i.e., higher ohmic resistance) and salt amount of the influent.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.182-190
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• 2017

All liquids contain a small amount of gaseous components and the amount of gases dissolved in a liquid is in accordance with Henry's Law. In a multi-stage thermal-type seawater desalination plant, as the supplied seawater undergoes variations in temperature and pressure in each evaporator, the gases dissolved in the seawater are discharged from the liquid. The discharged gases are carbon dioxide, nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, and these emitted gases are non-condensable. From the viewpoint of convective heat transfer, the evaluation of non-condensable gas released during a vacuum evaporation process is a very important design factor because the non-condensable gases degrade the performance of the cooler. Furthermore, in a thermal-type seawater desalination plant, most evaporators operate under vacuum, which maintained through vacuum system such as a steam ejector or a vacuum pump. Therefore, for the proper design of a vacuum system, estimating the non-condensable gases released from seawater is highly crucial. In the study, non-condensable gases released in a thermal-type seawater desalination plant were calculated quantitatively. The calculation results showed that the NCG releasing rate decreased as the stage comes getting a downstream and it was proportional to the freshwater production rate.

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.39 no.9
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• pp.542-547
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• 2017

This paper was to analyze the membrane characterization of hydrophilicity, surface morphology and membrane chemical anlysis of three commercial microfiltration/ultrafiltration membranes, and evaluate the filtration performance of a seawater to assess the availability for pretreatment of desalination process. From the results of contact angle, Mem-3, fabricated with polyacrylonitrile, was highly hydrophilic. It find out that Mem-3 has more anti-biofouling property. In Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), Mem-1 (polyethylene) and Mem-2 (Polyvinylidenefluoride) showed the sponge-like shape and Mem-3 showed finger-like shape. Membrane chemical analysis by energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) presented that Mem-2 was mostly fluoride and Mem-3 had s high ratio of N (32.47%) due to the nitrile group. The permeation flowrate per time on suction pressures using deionized water (D.I. water) tends that permeation rate of Mem-3 more increased when the pressure was increased compared to other membranes. From the results of turbidity and total suspended solids (TSS) removal, turbidity of permeate was 0.191 NTU to 0.406 NTU and TSS was 2.2 mg/L to 3.0 mg/L in all membranes, indicating that it was not suitable for the pretreatment of seawater desalination by short-term experiments.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.209-217
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• 2022

Ion exchange membrane (IEM) is an important class of membrane applied in batteries, fuel cells, chloride-alkali processes, etc to separate various mono and multivalent ions. The membrane process is based on the electrically driven force, green separation method, which is an emerging area in desalination of seawater and water treatment. Electrodialysis (ED) is a technique in which cations and anions move selectively along the IEM. Anion exchange membrane (AEM) is one of the important components of the ED process which is critical to enhancing the process efficiency. The introduction of cross-linking in the IEM improves the ion-selective separation performance due to the reduction of free volume. During the desalination of seawater by reverse osmosis (RO) process, there is a lot of dissolved salt present in the concentrate of RO. So, the ED process consisting of a monovalent cation-selective membrane reduces fouling and improves membrane flux. This review is divided into three sections such as electrodialysis (ED), anion exchange membrane (AEM), and cation exchange membrane (CEM).

• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.251-257
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• 2014

This research is focused on coagulation and sand filtration process as a pretreatment of RO seawater desalination. RO systems require sufficient and reliable pretreatment process to produce superior quality of RO feedwater that can mitigate RO membrane fouling. This experiment was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of coagulation and filtration process under various experimental conditions including different coagulant dose, flocculation mixing intensity and time, turbidity, and filtration rate. The experimental results showed that the optimum pretreatment conditions resulting in lower SDI value suitable for RO feedwater were coagulation pH 6.5, raw water turbidity greater than 4 NTU, and media bed depth greater than 550 mm. However, flocculation mixing intensity, coagulant dose, and filtration rate relatively affected little on the filtration efficiency.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.182-191
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• 2002

Polyamide reverse osmosis (RO) membrane with thin film composite structure was commercialized for seawater desalination process. Recently, it has been reported that some RO processes for high pressure and recovery leads to reducing in energy cost and pretreatment scale compared with earlier process. The development of energy recovery, pumping device and RO elements with high pressure and rejection made high pressure and recovery process possible. In this study, permeation properties of commercialized seawater RO membrane were investigated under the condition of high pressure and recovery. In the RO sheet membrane test 3.5% NaCl of synthetic seawater was used. The synthetic seawater contained only sodium chloride. In the RO module test, natural seawater was used at Happo Bay, Masan city. As the results, RO membrane with high durability of pressure was better than that with high rejection of seawater for high pressure and recovery process. Seawater rejection of high concentrate tends to be improved by high pressure operation.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.293-300
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• 2021

Recently, various researches have been studied, such as water treatment, water reuse, and seawater desalination using CDI (Capacitive deionization) technology. Also, applications like MCDI (Membrane capacitive deionization), FCDI (Flow-capacitive deionization), and hybrid CDI have been actively studied. This study tried to investigate various factors by an experiment on the TDS (Total dissolved solids) removal characteristics using MCDI module in aqueous solution. As a result of the TDS concentration of feed water from 500 to 2,000 mg/L, the MCDI cell broke through faster when the higher TDS concentration. In the case of TDS concentration according to the various flow rate, 100 mL/min was stable. In addition, there was no significant difference in the desorption efficiency according to the TDS concentration and method of backwash water used for desorption. As a result of using concentrated water for desorption, stable adsorption efficiency was shown. In the case of the MCDI module, the ions of the bulk solution which is escaped from the MCDI cell to the spacer during the desorption process are more important than the concentration of ions during desorption. Therefore, the MCDI process can get a larger amount of treated water than the CDI process. Also, prepare a plan that can be operated insensitive to the TDS concentration of backwash water for desorption.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.97-106
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• 2018

In this study, the effect of chemically enhanced backwash(CEB) coping with algal(Heterosigma Akashiwo) inflow was evaluated in the seawater desalination pretreatment process using ceramic membrane. In order to confirm the possibility of long-term filtration operation, the recovery rate of transmembrane pressure(TMP) due to the CEB using NaOCl was examined. When the membrane flow rate was 83.3 LMH, the TMP was maintained within 200 kPa for 84 hours in seawater influent. As the algal counts of 30,000 cell/mL were injected into the influent of seawater, however, the TMP rapidly increased and exceed maximum value. Membrane fouling caused by the algae was very poorly recovered by usual physical backwash. The CEB was performed for 30 min(3 min circulation / 27 min immersion) with 300 mg/L of NaOCl. As a result of the CEB application, it was possible to maintain a stable operating of filtration during 10 days and the average recovery rate of TMP by the CEB was 98.1%. It has been confirmed that the CEB using NaOCl is very effective in removal of membrane fouling by algae, resulted in stable membrane filtration for the long-term operation.